


oceans between you and me

by shadhahvar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, M/M, Makka Seaslug, Massive Storm at Sea, MerMay, Merman Viktor Nikiforov, Near Drowning, Outside Observer, Prince Katsuki Yuuri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 16:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar/pseuds/shadhahvar
Summary: Viktor has always been fascinated by the people from the lands above the seas.  Over his years of observing the humans who live in the castle by the sea, he finds himself falling in love with the idea of one young man in particular--and breaking with his people's centuries old wisdom in order to save Yuuri's life.





	oceans between you and me

**Author's Note:**

> Happy MerMay, and a nod to Royalty AU Week as well. I hope you enjoy this take on merfolk and one particular mer's fascination with humanity!
> 
> Thank you so much to Daffy, Izzy, and Luna for helping edit this story; without you, it wouldn't be posted here today. ❤

He heard human music for the first time when he’d been alive for seven migrations of the great whales that swam through his underwater city in the warm season. The islands of man were more sparsely populated in his stretch of the seas, little more than the occasional blot of shadow in a shifting, refractive sky. Their infrequency was lure enough even if Viktor hadn't been an inquisitive young mer.

Viktor found the world above the water fascinating. First their music, then their songs, and then the dancing that happened while touching ground the that still managed to rise and claim the air as the dancers under the waves claimed the water. They flew like the soaring fish and the seabirds, only to touch down again, landbound in a way that no floating creature fully understood.

Ships were his first fascination. Surfacing near them in the light of dawn, he listened to the calls of those on deck, picking up mysterious words like _port side_ and _starboard_ and _mast_ and _sails_ and _rum._ The landbound people on board were almost all human, and they were all called sailors, and at night, on calm seas, they would sing and play and drink and disappear toward far horizons.

Viktor loved swimming up under the fat, swollen bellies of merchant ships and prying barnacles off as momentos. He had a collection of them paired with dates and descriptions of the number of sails each ship had, all integrated with his personal corals in his sea slug Makkachin’s garden. He liked to think Makkachin was as fond of the immobile creatures as Viktor himself. Either way, Makkachin didn’t attempt to eat them.

He braved the human shoreline for the first time when he’d seen sixteen migrations of the great whales. He swam out to sing with them, joining the other young mer in their muted and vibrant colours, feeling whalesong fill their bones and reverberate in their lungs until they breathed in and sang their counterpoint, wishing the whales safe journeys North.

When humans sang, it was different. Viktor learned this when he dared follow one merchant ship to shore, breaking away when too many ships converged. The landbound city was built against the shore, canals of saltwater leading into an impressive, walled off building of which Viktor could only see the tops of the structures inside. 

Curiosity drove him forward, diving beneath the surface and following the curving walls to an underwater grate. Down here the metal had rusted, barnacles and mussels and tiny clams affixed to the stone and metal.

Viktor felt along the opening, testing bars and stones with single-minded focus. There were land-ways inside, but land-ways were of no use to a mer. When his questing fingers found a break in the mortar of the stones, he dug in, contorting himself to work the stone free. Little by little he found himself working the strange apparatus that held the metal grate in place loose until the whole grate came away in his hands. He set it down on the bottom of the sandy-silt covered ground, ducking his head forward to encourage the long, untamed tresses of his hair to billow behind him. Vision unobscured, Viktor regarded the dark stretch of tunnel before him with a moment’s misgivings. 

He swam forward, sure of himself as any young creature. Nothing he faced could be insurmountable. Not at sixteen migrations.

The far end of the tunnel had a broken cover of its own, one that Viktor slipped past with minimal fuss. He found himself in a sort of sea-garden leading up to a private beach, rocks arranged in artful, convenient mounds. Curving around one, he carefully broke the surface, listening with intent once the water drained out of his ears.

Air carried sound differently than water, and Viktor was cautious as he listened, trying to understand what his ears told him now. Voices and sounds floated across the quiet waves toward him, sounds perhaps further away or closer than he expected weaving an odd melody in the warm night air. Bioluminescent creatures flickered and flowed in cages affixed to poles, gasping and shifting like nothing Viktor had ever seen. Beneath their captivating light he saw three landbound twirling and swirling and playing some game of chase almost like those he remembered from a scant few migrations earlier.

Human children. He knew they existed, logically, but seeing the reality, seeing how their upper halves were so uncannily like those of the children younger than Viktor, was different. He couldn’t look away as the familiar and the unfamiliar clashed in the form of these children, running around on legs that looked too thin to support the weight of their torsos, standing and darting and jumping like so many sunfish fry in the safety of their kelp beds.

They moved in surprising, shocking ways. It took him even longer to realise the children weren’t alone, turning his gaze to an older man sitting to the side and offering boisterous advice to the children while generating the melody that Viktor had first heard when surfacing. 

The human made music. Not the songs of the whales, or the melodies the mer wove together as they worked. Music that sounded like wind tamed and appeased into beautiful utterances; music that crafted a sweeter call than any seabird ever uttered. Music that reminded Viktor of the ocean and their bounty, the great and terrible beauty of his home, splashing upward toward a sky forever out of reach.

Music found a home in his chest mingled with the beating of his heart, and Viktor was never again the same.

He stole into the walled beach often over the years, learning to choose his times for music for when the things he learned were called lights appeared as so many captured, twinkling stars over the great expanse of the wall. 

He learned the names of the children who had cavorted, learned too that what they did was a dance as surely as what he practiced under the waves. He learned that Yuuko was the fleetest, but tired first; that Takeshi had strength, but lacked an inherent grace. Yuuri was the youngest, if Viktor’s guess remained correct, and he had within him a sense for the music that his companions lacked. He understood that they weren’t made of loose and flowing parts beyond the hair upon their heads, that the colourful pieces he’d first mistaken as part of their skins were in fact _clothing_ , and underneath they were as pale as the stripped bones of a great whale lying upon the bottom of the sea.

He learned about art, in a human sense. He learned about sculpture that wasn’t crafted of coral, built as a living monument to the bounty of the ocean. Sculpture for humans could be stone shaped into a likeness of themselves, or what they saw in the world around them. Yuuri hauled one out around the time he was eighteen migrations old and loaded it into one of the small boats he and his companions took out into the contained ocean within the palace walls. Finding the deepest portion he could, he tipped the carved stone over the side of his boat and dropped it into the waters, thrown back off balance as his boat rocked and nearly threw him overboard.

Viktor watched from where he was pressed against one collection of stone, hair pulled around over a shoulder to avoid floating out from where he hid. He wanted Yuuri to fall in, he realised, wanting an excuse to come closer than he had ever dared. Humans were fascinating, but as with any natural force in the world, they were also dangerous.

By that time he’d watched and listened and used that gift his people had with tongues to learn the languages that flowed through Yuuri’s home; he understood Yuuri’s words dancing across the surface of rippling water as a curse.

“I _refuse_ to marry you!”

Marriage was another word he’d learned, overhearing conversations about complicated relationships that mirrored so many of those he knew beneath the surface of the waves. Humans believed in marriage, and he had to assume it was like the marriage of souls he knew, the binding of two into one. There were flaws, regrets, mistakes all possible, but by and large those who took the step into matrimony were happily bound.

It made sense not to rush such things. Yet humans seemed more liberal in their willingness to engage, all the more puzzling to Viktor when he had come to learn Yuuri was part of their nobility. Back then he hadn’t understood the context, only that Yuuri cried out against marriage and threw some semblance of it into the shallow, contained sea.

Yuuri rowed back to shore, a far shorter distance than Viktor felt noteworthy. He contained his curiosity until he saw his favourite human tying up his boat, dusting off his hands and staring out at the dark waters with a frown on his face. His distance seemed manifold in moments like these; where even his thoughts and emotions were closed off to Viktor, beyond where his tail could propel him to swim.

That night when he dove down and found the statue of a torso and head with no arms to speak of, he was amused. What strange things humans made, but oh, as he dusted the silt and sand from the planes of the carved features on stone, he wondered. Gathering his arms around the bust from a man he’d never formally met, he hauled it toward the gate, arms aching with effort.

He might have left the statue by the grate to save himself further effort if the light thrown down on the water didn’t hit at an angle to cast the stone’s features into sharp relief. Viktor stared in wonder at the stone faced Yuuri who stared back at him, expression inscrutable and determined, carved eyes looking into the distance, searching as Viktor found he searched.

He would never have a chance to touch Yuuri. There were too many dangers, too few rewards. Yet here, now, was a Yuuri who was neither landbound nor dangerous. Here he was stone, and Viktor reached out, running rough fingers over smooth surfaces with an ache so tender blooming in his chest, paralysing his throat.

Love took Viktor by surprise, even this weak form, an infatuation born of nothing more remarkable than the way Yuuri danced and the cadence of his voice when he spoke with his friends about a future Viktor didn’t share. He knew what it was even as he spent a week hauling the bust out and away, happy in some bizarre manner that Yuuri’s rejection of some unknown person’s courting gift had brought Viktor this treasure. 

He installed the bust of Yuuri in his private garden, took care to keep it free of any sealife seeking to move onto the smooth expanse of Yuuri’s cheek, the striated lines of his hair, the curve of his neck where it met his shoulder. Perhaps it was apt that all Viktor held onto was the approximation of what both mer and human shared. From the waist up, they might but be of the same people.

He learned the shape of Yuuri with his fingertips, learned the curve of his neck with his arms, nuzzled against the unyielding stone and pretended for a while that stone would give way to the warmth of flesh. His was an impossible love that Viktor allowed to bank and burn when his time was called more and more often to the defense of his people; when he was asked to dance the rituals with the best, swimming and circling and twirling with his hair billowing out behind him as he dove down, down, down to lay resting in the silt.

Viktor visited when he could, a quiet, silent observer in the ebb and flow of the castle’s private beach. He learned of other things that summer, of humans and some of the many ways they made love. Without their layers of clothing they were even more similar and strange to the mer. They kissed in a way he had never before seen, kissed everywhere, moved hands and bodies in manners he hadn’t thought about in his own brief flings. 

He couldn’t bring himself to stay when it was Yuuri bringing a lover close to the waves, in the lee of the cultivated trees and benches and flowers that made this beach a garden of paradise. Viktor didn’t need to know where it was Yuuri found his heart. It wasn’t his business, in the end, how Yuuri had his pleasure in the search for his heart’s twin.

He didn’t notice he’d stopped his own search for another year, when Georgi found him crafting an intricate necklace of shells and imperfect pearls strung together on gossamer strands of ocean-spider silk.

“Someone catch your eye? A pretty set of fins or flukes to brush against yours for this season’s homage to the moon?”

Viktor shook his head, the curling edges of his tailfin resting on the smooth stone bench behind him. Comfortable as he was on his stomach, propped up on woven kelp cushions, Georgi’s words brought him back to the timing of everything. He knew human calendars better now, how they broke up time into years and months and days. He kept etchings on hardened sandstone to reference when the numbers slipped and fled his mind.

This month Yuuri reached an important land birthday. Viktor didn’t understand it, but he knew it, and for all they’d never met, he was determined this gift would find Yuuri where Viktor never could.

“Just a personal project. My hands have felt restless.” 

Georgi cocked his head to the side, touching his chin with the knuckle of his finger. “Oh?”

“Oh.” Viktor summoned up a polite smile, the kind with relaxed lips and a friendly showing of teeth. “What about yourself?”

Georgi only hesitated for a moment, studying his nest-mate with a knowing gaze. “As you know, I’ve been spending time with a few eligible mer, and…”

Viktor listened, tipping his head to the side at the right times, making a gesture with his hand at others. Georgi’s heart was large and easy to hurt, but well mended and ever hopeful. If any of their nest-mates found their heart’s mate, it would be Georgi, he believed. 

He carried that thought with him as he sang in the quiet to Yuuri’s statue, a song for good health and plentiful seas. He wouldn’t sing this for Yuuri in person, but the proxy was almost enough tonight. Viktor swam closer, laying the intricate necklace against Yuuri’s stone breast.

It should fit the real human, and it would be all the more beautiful against the vibrancy of living skin.

Bolstered by that thought, Viktor tucked the necklace into his kelp pouch, striking out through the warm waters toward the cooler stretch that lay between his home and Yuuri’s. As the waters darkened around him and the swells at the surface grew more and more dramatic, Viktor angled upward. He loved swimming in storms like these, riding waves as they coursed in every direction, the swells and troughs of sea-bound waves a special pleasure and joy. Today they were an imposition, and with night falling, a danger on their own. 

The storm blew in with little warning, sweeping down on the coastline where Yuuri lived with the mindless overwhelming power of nature at its most incomprehensible. Viktor’s stomach felt small and hard, his heart pounding in his ears as he dove down and resurfaced again and again. Every instinct told him two things: this was a beautifully dangerous storm, and something was horribly wrong.

He swam faster, a streak of silver and pink that had aged into a beautiful speckling of rose and coral and shades Viktor didn’t name. He liked that his tail looked like the skies that hung overhead during dramatic sunsets, rich and vibrant in a way no one had expected he’d maintain past adulthood. Right now he raced toward the cold certainty of impending disaster as the sun fled the skies to sink below the line of the horizon, circling forever around the world.

Nearly there, he spotted the beautiful merchant ship crashing through the great swells, fighting to stay upright in the fury of the storm. Letters painted across the prow glittered as lightning flashed across the sky, piercing the bellies of the swollen clouds raining down on them all. _History Maker_. The ship commissioned for the Prince’s coming of age celebration.

Yuuri’s ship. Yuuri’s gift.

 _Yuuri_.

He cried out in protest as he dove down, swimming closer through turbulent seas. There was debris in the water already, but the ship held firm, two humans lashed and dangling over the side being hauled up by their fellows. Viktor broke surface far too close, within sighting distance, desperately scanning the ship decks for any sign of Yuuri, drenched as he had to be.

A glint off metal spectacles pulled Viktor’s attention to Yuuri. Yuuri, who stood at the railing, eyes wide and white even at a distance, struggling to help haul another human back on board.

Viktor felt his heart seize with relief. Yuuri knew how to swim, as Viktor had discovered to his near-deadly surprise (truly, he’d thought he’d die of a heart attack until he was sure Yuuri hadn’t seen him swimming around the leeward side of one rock structure in the tame beach waters), but swimming in a storm like this was a feat meant for heroes and creatures of the sea. Yuuri was hero enough as any other human standing on that ship, fighting for their lives. He didn’t need to prove it any further than he already had, and he was no creature of the sea. 

Viktor rode the crest of another massive swell, swallowing and taking a breath of air to clear his throat. He watched Yuuri and the other humans, unable to look away. It was he who saw the danger as it loomed, a mast coming loose and swinging wide as the ship listed hard to starboard. Yuuri was the only human standing within its reach, knocked off his secure perch and sent tumbling into the wild seas.

Viktor moved before his brain registered the action. Thousands of warnings, hundreds of tales of human and mer contact ending in tragedy, seasons of playing his own game of daring but never crossing this final line were tossed away in the current as he swam toward where Yuuri fell.

He had one thought in mind. _I have to save him._ Cost was irrelevant in the face of the life of a pseudo-stranger Viktor had fallen in love with, even knowing that love was a farce.

He powered through the water, finding Yuuri sinking and kicking with desperation toward the surface before the water dragged him back under. He bobbed up again, head thrust into the air, arms and legs striking out in circular motions, fighting to keep from submerging.

Viktor knew humans couldn’t breathe below the surface, and for all Yuuri had commendable endurance, he wouldn’t survive this night on his own.

Swimming up behind him, Viktor pulled Yuuri back against his chest, shouting in his ear as Yuuri fought against his hold.

“Yuuri! Swim with me, don’t fight against me.” The ship was carried further away each moment, not quite beyond reach for Viktor. The cutting edge of the shark’s tooth he balanced on urged caution and desperation in turns. Viktor focused on the least damaging course, powerful sweeps of his tail taking them backward, angling for the distant shore.

Yuuri’s hands clutched at Viktor’s arms, nails digging into the flesh he found there. He coughed, trying to speak. “Who?” was all he managed before breaking off as water crashed over their shoulders, dissolving into a fit of coughing.

“Someone who wants to see you live,” Viktor said, close to shouting in his ear to be heard over the noise of the storm. Yuuri stopped his struggling, legs no longer kicking Viktor’s tail each time it swept back toward Yuuri. If it was complacency, agreement, or simply shock, Viktor didn’t know.

He swam like Yuuri’s life depended on it. 

He had no idea how long it took him to reach shore. Yuuri passed out in transit, his hold on Viktor’s arms turning into a limp deadweight that Viktor adjusted before continuing to swim with his single minded determination. There were few places where he could easily beach himself, let alone Yuuri, but one such place was up the coast from the human settlement Yuuri lived by. Under the clearing night skies, Viktor hauled Yuuri closer to home, not letting up even when he faced the particular struggle of getting them up on the sands.

He rode the waves in as far as he could, Yuuri shifted onto his back. With one hand clutching Yuuri’s collar to keep him in position, Viktor propelled himself to shore, stomach and belly and chest scraping against sand and stone as he wriggled and crawled and pulled them both further from the grasping reach of the waves.

Viktor could be on land, used to nap with the big seals after their mating season had moved into whelping season. He remembered the last time he’d soaked up sun napping just down the way from the sleeping giants, appreciating the uncomplicated company.

Yuuri was anything but uncomplicated. Cold even to Viktor’s chill touch, he shivered and chattered and wasn’t so much pale as verging on blue. They had hours before the sun would break across the horizon, bringing its welcome heat with it. Yuuri would freeze before then if he wouldn’t wake, and as Viktor gently prodded and explored with his fingers, he wasn’t sure Yuuri would even be able to move should he wake. Something about his ribs felt wrong, broken, like the time Viktor had his ribs snapped by the ramming power of a territorial dolphin.

Yuuri’s clothes weren’t helping either. Whatever normally covered his feet was half missing, only a skin covering and the laces of what he remembered as a _boot_ left behind. Each layer was soaked and cold and didn’t warm even when Viktor pressed himself close, willing himself to warm Yuuri with everything he had.

He fumbled through pulling Yuuri’s useless clothing off, tossing it to the side and allowing little more than a cursory glance of the blue-tinged flesh underneath. He was so similar to mer, until he wasn’t, his stomach smoothing into a v-shape with muscle around the tops of his legs. There were other different bits and bobbles, but Viktor didn’t concern himself with them as he made sure work of pulling the clothesless Yuuri onto dry sand. 

He felt the salt on his skin, his scales itching as the night air dried them without the soothing warmth of the sun as balm. Viktor pushed his hair back over his shoulders and curled around Yuuri, pulling him into the curve of his body. With his head resting on Viktor’s ribs, he tucked his tail close to the side of Yuuri’s body, fins covering Yuuri’s lower legs.

He’d broken all but one rule tonight, and now, facing the possibility of Yuuri dying in spite of being saved from drowning, Viktor closed his eyes and resigned himself to breaking the last rule. The one rule that his own wouldn’t forgive him for breaking for the fear it brought alongside all the beautiful things it might do.

Viktor breathed in deep and began to sing. He sang in Yuuri’s tongue, the pronunciation of his own tongue next to impossible above the water. Still, the intent was behind the words, a plea to the natural world to aid Viktor at the cost of Viktor’s energy. Magic, such as it was, and guided by Viktor’s heart.

He sang for warmth, to cocoon them both in the pleasant heat of a early summer day. He sang for healing, bones knitting together into a whole, remembering what it was like to be unbroken. He sang to health, a body operating in harmony with itself and the world around it. He sang, and as the magic uncurled from deep in his chest, he watched a light shine from underneath his breastbone.

He knew that light before he knew that this was the wise course of action. Mers lived with only half a heart, though they suffered for it; he didn’t know whether a human could ever share their heart in the same way, even if one were willing. Yet here Yuuri was dying, his pulse weakening under Viktor’s fingertips, his breathing growing more and more laboured.

Viktor could save him as long as he didn’t fear the uncertainty. As long as Viktor could accept the reality of a life lived alone, for exactly as long as Yuuri lived, separated by the sea. 

He sang on, sang until the glowing point over his heart expanded, beating along with the rhythm of his heartbeat, the rhythm of the sea. The soft red glow grew and grew until it was burning closer to white, and at the point where it was painful, close to bringing tears to Viktor’s eyes, he reached out to Yuuri. Still singing, Viktor placed a hand over Yuuri’s chest, over where he hoped human hearts beat as strongly as mer hearts.

He sang as the light traveled the length of his arm, spreading out over Yuuri’s chest. He sang as the ache changed into a hum that left his bones itching, from the top of his skull to the tips of his tail fin. Following on its heels came a soothing warmth, washing over him like the waves that lapped against the shore below where they lay. 

He felt cold in the aftermath, shivering while Yuuri burned where they touched. It only lasted for a few heartbeats, before they both were of a similar temperature, and Viktor imagined in those moments their two hearts beat as one. Soon enough the illusion would be destroyed. Yuuri no longer lay deathly pale. There was colour to his skin, which had gone from smoothed to pebbled in tiny, indescribable ways. Viktor had never seen skin do that before.

Gooseflesh was not a phenomena of the sea.

He sang until his voice gave out, and then he hummed, waiting for the dawn that painted the skies in colours as resplendent as the ones etched into the flesh of his tail. Yuuri woke as the seabirds cried out over the water, riding the air like fish rode the current underneath the waves reflecting their feathered bodies. They were beautiful. Yuuri was beautiful, startling awake and sitting up, eyes wide and brow furrowed in confusion.

He looked so familiar, even more finely wrought and more ordinary than the visage Viktor knew carved into stone. He reached out, brushing the pad of one rough thumb over Yuuri’s cheek, feeling a thrill travel down his arm and through his body at the contact.

He wondered what it would be like to kiss Yuuri. Surely Viktor was already a lost cause, but as Yuuri stared at him in open wonder and Viktor stared back, he found no will to move.

“Who are you?” Yuuri’s voice was parched and broken, not the fine instrument Viktor remembered hearing on other nights, always for other ears.

Viktor smiled, careful not to show all his teeth. Enough of a smile to be what he hoped was friendly, not challenging. “No one in particular.”

Yuuri’s brow furrowed deeper, his lips tugging down into a frown. He didn’t look down at his legs or the spread of Viktor’s fin. He simply looked at Viktor.

“What’s your name?”

“Is it all that important, Yuuri? You’re alive, and that’s what matters.” The longer he lingered, the greater the chance of his being caught. There were no happy endings for mers held under human hands. He’d never heard of any, at the very least.

“Because you saved me,” Yuuri said, and he reached out with a sand covered hand to run the tips of his fingers along Viktor’s jaw. “And you know my name, so just tell me yours already. I don’t like people playing games.” He pulled his hand back, stiffening, then glanced away. “I’m sorry, I’m not in the best… place at the moment. I just…” He trailed off, losing his words as his eyes found Viktor’s tail.

Viktor twitched, the muscles of his body transmitting it down the length of his torso and tail until his fin flicked upward, a jaunty sort of wave. Not an appropriate response, perhaps, but he needed something other than the way his heart ached when Yuuri asked for his name. “You’re stubborn,” he said, and he had known that already, but there was delight in having that stubbornness aimed his way. “You would call me Viktor in your tongue.”

Yuuri gaped at Viktor’s tail, hand pressed to his mouth, covering his lower face. He gestured down toward Viktor’s tail, sand peppering his lower lip and chin as he whipped his face around to stare at Viktor. “That’s a tail. There’s a tail there! Is that your tail? That can’t be your tail, because if that’s your tail, then you’re a—”

“Mer,” Viktor said.

“Mermaid!” Yuuri said, the two of them caught staring at each other, equally surprised.

They held each other’s gaze for a beat of Viktor’s heart before he smiled, head tilting to the side with amusement overwhelming all his other concerns. “I assure you, Yuuri, I’m not a maid.”

“Well,” Yuuri said, looking from Viktor propped up on an elbow at Yuuri’s side around to the curve of his tail on Yuuri’s other side, no longer draped over his legs. “I’m starting to see that, yes.”

They met each other’s eyes again and broke down laughing, and for a moment, light was all that filled Viktor’s world.

**Author's Note:**

> ❤ to be continued... ;)


End file.
